By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

It is the love of the [British] people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, …

If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy.

Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century.

The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.